Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics: New Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology

283 Pages·2018·4.89 MB·English

by  Mikel Burley (Editor)

Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
i
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ii
Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics
New Perspectives from
Philosophy and Th eology
Edited by
Mikel Burley
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Names: Burley, Mikel, 1972– editor.
Title: Wittgenstein, religion, and ethics : new perspectives from philosophy
and theology / edited by Mikel Burley.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
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ISBN 9781350050228 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781350050235 (ePub) |
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Subjects: LCSH: Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951. | Religion. | Ethics. | Religious ethics.
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iv
In memory of Dewi Z. Phillips (1934–2006), who, in a Wittgensteinian spirit,
encouraged us to seek to do conceptual justice to the world in all its variety
and to recognize that doing so makes ethical demands of the inquirer.
v
vi
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Wittgenstein, Religion and Ethics: Seeing the Connections
Mikel Burley 1
1 Th e Early Wittgenstein on Ethical Religiousness as a Dispositional
Attitude C hon Tejedor 13
2 ‘Th e Problem of Life’: Later Wittgenstein on the Diffi culty of
Honest Happiness G abriel Citron 33
3 Wittgenstein and the Study of Religion: Beyond Fideism and
Atheism M ikel Burley 49
4 Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Chalcedon R owan Williams 77
5 On the Very Idea of a Th eodicy G enia Schö nbaumsfeld 93
6 Wittgenstein, Analogy and Religion in Mulhall’s
Th e Great Riddle Wayne Proudfoot 113
7 Riddles, Nonsense and Religious Language S tephen Mulhall 129
8 Wittgenstein and the Distinctiveness of Religious
Language M ichael Scott 147
9 Number and Transcendence: Wittgenstein and Cantor
John Milbank 169
10 What Have I Done? S ophie Grace Chappell 195
11 Wittgenstein and the Value of Clarity Duncan Richter 219
Bibliography 237
Index 255
vii
Notes on Contributors
Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University
of Leeds, UK . His publications include C ontemplating Religious Forms of Life:
Wittgenstein and D. Z. Phillips (Continuum, 2012), R ebirth and the Stream of Life:
A Philosophical Study of Reincarnation, Karma and Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2016)
and a volume co- edited with Niklas Forsberg and Nora H ä mä l ä inen entitled
Language, Ethics and Animal Life: Wittgenstein and Beyond (Bloomsbury, 2012).
He is currently completing a monograph entitled E xpanding Philosophy of
Religion: A Radical Pluralist Approach .
Sophie Grace Chappell is Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, U K.
Previously known as Timothy Chappell, she began living openly and offi cially as
a woman in autumn 2014. She was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and
Edinburgh University, and has published widely on ethics, moral psychology,
epistemology, ancient philosophy and philosophy of religion. Her books include
Understanding Human Goods (Edinburgh University Press, 2003), R eading Plato’s
Th eaetetus (Hackett, 2005), Ethics and Experience (Acumen, 2009) and K nowing
What to Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics (Oxford University
Press, 2014). She has also edited or co- edited four collections of essays in ethics,
most recently I ntuition, Th eory, and Anti-Th eory in Ethics (Oxford University
Press, 2015). From 2017 to 2020 she is a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow,
and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, University of St Andrews.
Her main current research is about epiphanies, immediate and revelatory
encounters with value. She lives with her family in the north- east of Scotland.
Gabriel Citron is Assistant Professor in Religion and Critical Th ought at Princeton
University, USA . His extensive Wittgenstein editing work includes publishing notes
by Rush Rhees and Norman Malcolm in M ind and co- editing (with David Stern
and Brian Rogers) Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933: From the Notes of
G. E. Moore (Cambridge University Press, 2016). His authored work includes articles
in P hilosophers’ Imprint , Philosophical Investigations and Faith and Philosophy .
John Milbank is Emeritus Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics at the
University of Nottingham, UK . His many books include Th eology and Social
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Th eory (Blackwell, 1990; second edition, 2006), Th e Word Made Strange
(Blackwell, 1997), T ruth in Aquinas (co- authored with Catherine Pickstock;
Routledge, 2001), B eing Reconciled (Routledge, 2003), Beyond Secular Order
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and Th e Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the
Human Future (co- authored with Adrian Pabst; Rowman and Littlefi eld, 2016).
He has also published two collections of poetry and co- authored two books with
Slavoj Ž i ž ek and Creston Davis.
Stephen Mulhall is Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College, University
of Oxford, UK . His publications include Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Kierkegaard (Oxford University Press, 2001), O n Film (Routledge,
2002; second edition, 2008; third edition, 2016), Wittgenstein’s Private Language
(Oxford University Press, 2006), Th e Conversation of Humanity (University of
Virginia Press, 2007), Th e Wounded Animal: J. M. Coetzee and the Diffi culty of
Reality (Princeton University Press, 2009), Th e Self and Its Shadows (Oxford
University Press, 2013) and Th e Great Riddle: Wittgenstein and Nonsense,
Th eology and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Wayne Proudfoot is Professor of Religion at Columbia University, USA , with
research interests that encompass contemporary philosophy of religion,
conceptions of religious experience and mysticism, classical and contemporary
pragmatism and modern Protestant thought. His publications include God and
the Self: Th ree Types of Philosophy of Religion (Associated University Presses,
1976), Religious Experience (University of California Press, 1985), an edited
volume entitled William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing ‘Th e
Varieties of Religious Experience’ (Columbia University Press, 2004) and some
recent articles on the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Duncan Richter is Professor of Philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute,
USA . His publications include Ethics aft er Anscombe: Post ‘Modern Moral
Philosophy’ (Kluwer, 2000), W ittgenstein at His Word (Continuum, 2004), W hy
Be Good? A Historical Introduction to Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2007),
Anscombe’s Moral Philosophy (Lexington, 2011) and Historical Dictionary of
Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (Lexington, 2014; fi rst edition, 2004). He has also
published articles on philosophy’s relation to poetry and the emotions as well as
on Wittgenstein and religion.
Genia Schö nbaumsfeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Southampton, UK . Specializing in Wittgenstein, epistemology, Kierkegaard and
philosophy of religion, her publications include T ranszendentale Argumentation